12/04/07 New Wheat Growers President will focus on organization

Washington Ag December 4, 2007 The new President of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers is Randy Uhrich of Douglas County. Uhrich says he expects the recently created Washington Grain Alliance will be getting a lot of his attention in the coming year as will getting WAWG back to the grassroots. The Grain Alliance put the management of the Wheat Growers, the Washington Wheat Commission and the Washington Barley Commission under one CEO and one staff. Uhrich: "You know we have a lot of it squared away right now. We are trying to get some the intricacies work out, I mean WAWG is going to be working in the next couple of months on a strategic plan and then trying to dovetail in with the Commission and then set our priorities. Where we are going? What is important? Where we are going to carry the water for some of the legislative items. Because we are small organization so we can't do everything so we need to look at what can we do and what are other people going to do." At the national level the major issue of course is a new farm bill. Uhrich: "The high prices we are experience right now we know are not going to last forever and when they do fall we are going to need some kind of safety net, some kind of support just to keep our operations viable." And Uhrich says what wheat growers like is the direct payment adding that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I'm Bob Hoff.